Trouble ticket comes in to the on-site tech pilot fish at this small regional university: Students can't log in on some of the iMac computers in a Biology computer lab.

"The help desk reported that there was no issue with the PCs in the same room and that they could see the computers on the network," says fish.

"So over to the lab I trudged. I tried to log in to one of the affected machines with the local admin account, but the typed letters did not appear in the window.

"I tried a second machine, but this time two letters appeared with one key press.

"I had to replace five keyboards and one mouse. My initial thought was that the keyboards had died, but settled on a suspected liquid spill.

"But it turns out -- as I learned after a little questioning -- that the lab administrator had decided to clean some of the dirtier keyboards over the mid-semester break using Formula 409."

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